The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(81)

Bravery had nothing to do with it. “I met a holy man in Tanzania, a few years ago. His people believe that we were all creatures of the sea. That one day we left, searching for survival on land, but that was not so very long ago. His claim is that when the sea calls to us, it’s not calling us away, it’s calling us home. A home to which we can never return.”

“I like that,” she murmured. “The call home is the most powerful.”

He couldn’t disagree.

Reaching out, Lorelai pressed her hand to the window over where Tersea Island was a mere blotch in the distance. “Do you think you’ll find the Claudius Cache before you are discovered?”

He lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Dorian’s an earl. He has a great deal of influence, and I’ve always outsmarted, outrun, or overcome anyone who would try to contain or control me. With Moncrieff and my crew, and Dorian and his men, we should be able to find and plunder the treasure with little difficulty.”

A shadow flickered over her delicate features, as though she fought to grab hold of her own memories. Turning to him, she asked, “This Moncrieff … do you trust him?”

“Trust is for fools,” he clipped. “Not much to build a partnership on. But mutual self-interest, now that is something to rely upon. The greed of others, it’s never let me down.”

He yearned to smooth the wrinkle of worry from her forehead as she blinked up at him. “Your assessment of others is rather grim.”

“It’s not grim, it’s reality. It’s how things are.” He touched with his gaze everywhere his hands burned to go. “It’s how I am.” He was warning her. Cautioning her that he was close to the end of a tether. That he was trying to be good. He could not—would not—touch her. Or the tether might snap.

“People can change,” she ventured.

The hope in her blueberry gaze threatened to be his undoing.

Not a subtle woman, his wife. “People don’t change, Lorelai, only circumstances do.”

“You have changed,” she insisted. “Because circumstances forced change upon you. Doesn’t that mean you could reclaim who you once were?”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Time is a great healer, or so I’m told.” She smiled wryly. “I believe in you. Don’t you believe in me?”

He didn’t know how to answer her question. Couldn’t bring himself to tell her that she shouldn’t believe in him, and that he couldn’t allow himself to have faith in, or even hope for, anything.

“I’ve been asked to believe in a lot of things,” he began. “In a man’s word. His promise. His God. In heaven and in hell.” He retreated from the window a step, away from her alluring scent and siren’s lips. “I don’t know about heaven, but I know hell exists. I’ve spent most of my life there.” He ignored her soft sound of distress. “But through all that. Through everything that’s been done to me, I’ve only ever believed in one thing.”

“What’s that?” she whispered.

“That the sun would set in the west, and that I would come for you.”

Her face melted into an expression so achingly lovely, he had to look away or be overcome.

She reached for him, and he backed away further, putting up a staying hand against her.

“Be mine.” His voice sounded hoarse and rough, even to his own ears, but the need to hear her say the words drove him past the point of rationality. “Give yourself to me.”

She regarded him as though he’d lost his mind. “I already did. Thrice, to be exact. I’m trying to do it again, but you won’t hold still.”

“Not your body, dammit.” He was muddling this. Maybe if she wasn’t standing so near. Or looking so desirable. Maybe if they were in a different room. One bereft of the only happy memories he’d been allowed in his merciless life. “Be my wife, Lorelai,” he blurted. “That is … without any coercion. Or force. Or fear. Just … consent to be mine.” Christ, it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever said out loud. His skin felt hot and waxen at the same time. His breath was held in both desperation and despair.

“If I can call you Ash, then you can call me wife,” she bargained with a triumphant smile.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” he barked.

Her eyebrows lifted. “Is it not?”

He stared down at her for a long time before he could summon a reply. He wanted to call his armor back. Could he not be made of steel and stone instead of this flesh-and-blood man who hungered for her so vehemently?

“Very well,” he finally acquiesced. Did he ever have a choice? Could he deny her anything? “Now that I know who I am … I also know who I am not. I am not Dorian Blackwell. And I … no longer wish to be the monster created by a lifetime apart from you. Maybe, in time, I can be who you want me to be. You’ll … you’ll have to show me how.”

She rushed to him, ignoring the hand he held against her. Flinging her small, warm body against his with a dangerously contagious exuberance. “We could finally start our life together, once you find your treasure.”

He’d already found it.

Swept away by the tide of her emotion and his need, he crushed his lips against her offered mouth and secured her lush body to his.